These rules are currently untested and not exceptionally well developed. Worked examples of ships made based on these rules need to be created and tested in order to gather data to direct future development. If you see any major mistakes please point them out.

Step 0 - Core Rules, Planning, Things To Take Into Account

A few key things to take in mind before making a ship;

1) These are ships in a semi-realistic setting we're dealing with. They should look and function like ships. Propulsion systems should be clearly defined - no burying your thrusters right on top of the ship's core.

Ships should be large enough to feasibly contain all the necessary systems for them to operate on a daily basis. Some leeway is allowed due to BSF's inability to represent "tall" or vertical style ships, but please don't abuse it.

2) Any obvious attempts to abuse or bend the rules will be dealt with appropriately. This includes but is not limited to;2a) No section should have an HP of less than 20.2b) Ships that use unconventional shipbuilding techniques such as (but again not limited to) turrets/weapons to "drive" the entire ship's facing.2c) Some other blatantly rulebending/abusive shit I haven't ancitipated but will probably rear it's ugly head at some point because fuck knows I can't have nice things any more.

This does not exclude or prevent ships which incorporate a reasonable quantity of ablative armour in appropriate locations.

3) Whilst custom weapon sprites are permitted, weapons should have appropriate sprites for their purpose; no missile launchers that look like cannons, and no heavy artillery weapons that look like tiny machineguns.3a) Keep in mind that gifs with large muzzle flare animations can have abnormally large hitboxes as a result, which could lead to weapons being destroyed very easily. Use such sprites at your own peril!

Long story short, use common and aesthetic sense, realism is in moderate to significant effect, don't be a min-maxing/powergaming asshat, and everything should be fine.

Step 1 - Decide Radius

The first step in designing a ship is to decide how large you want it to be, this will determine how much equipment a ship will be able to carry, its durability and will affect its speed and maneouverability.

In shipmaker a ship's radius is indicated by its "size". Once you have decided on your ship's size round the number to the nearest 5 and square the result, this is your ship's MASS ALLOWANCE.

MASS ALLOWANCE represents the total ammount of space available for use on a ship.

Step 2 - Pick core and modules

In order for a ship to have any capability beyond drifting through space aimlessly it must be fitted with modules. All modules take up a portion of your ship's MASS ALLOWANCE, the total of all of the MASS ALLOWANCE used by modules is refered to as USED MASS. A ship's USED MASS may never exceed its MASS ALLOWANCE. In addition to mass, modules also have power requirements expressed as power drain in their profile, the total AVAILABLE POWER that a ship has is determined by its Power core.

Power Cores

Arguably the most important module of a ship is its Power Core, power cores are the beating heart of a ship and determine not not only the ammount of power available for a ship, but also its ultimate durability. Each ship has only a single power core, so choosing the correct one for your ship is vital.

Power cores have two attributes; Core Integrity and Power Output. Core Integrity represents the number of Hit Points that your ship's "core" section will have and Power Output determines the ammount of AVAILABLE POWER that a ship has.

Power core list

Standard CiviTech CoreRestriction #1: May not supply more than 100 power to weapons.Restriction #2: May not be employed on a ship designed for anything besides mining or colonizing.Restriction #3: May not provide power to non-CiviTech engines.Core Integrity: 100Power Output: 400Mass: 250

Heavy CiviTech CoreRestriction #1: May not supply more than 100 power to weapons.Restriction #2: May not be employed on a ship designed for anything besides mining or colonizing.Restriction #3: May not provide power to non-CiviTech engines.Core Integrity: 150Power Output: 800Mass: 700

Ultra-lightCore Integrity: 175Power Output: 550Mass: 600

LightCore Integrity: 250Power output: 850Mass: 1045

StandardCore Integrity: 400Power output: 1200Mass: 2200

HeavyCore Integrity: 650Power Output: 1850Mass: 3200

Ultra-heavyCore Integrity: 850Power Output: 2400Mass: 4500

Engines

In order for a ship to have any mobility it must have at least one engine module.Engine modules determine the speed, turn rate and acceleration of your ship. In addition to their mass engines have 3 other attributes; Speed Power, Acceleration Power and Turning Power. These attributes determine the ammount of speed, acceleration and turning capability that the engine module affords a ship.

Engine List:

Standard CiviTech EngineRestrictions: May not be used on a ship with more than 4000 Used Mass.Speed output: 1000Acceleration output: 50 Turning output: 500Hit Points: 75

Mass: 150Power Drain: 175

Heavy CiviTech EngineRestrictions: May not be used on a ship with more than 4000 Used Mass.Speed output: 2000Acceleration output: 100 Turning output: 1000Hit Points: 175

Weapons make people die, they take up both mass and power. Weapons given here require your help to balance.

Weapon List:

AutocannonsAutocannons are rapid-fire medium calibre guns (typically around 100mm for standard autocannons and 200mm for heavy autocannons) designed to deliver non-explosive shells from fairly long ranges.

Vulcan cannonsVulcans are multi-barreled guns that fire small rounds extremely rapidly, what they lack in accuracy and hitting power they make up for with high traversal speeds and massive volume of fire.

ArtilleryVery big guns that fire very large powerful filled with very large quantities of explosives from very long ranges. Beware the ship armed with artillery guns. The massive nature of artillery shells makes them vulnerable to point defence weapons.

Missile LaunchersTiny, unmanned ships carried by a parent vessel that when launched intentionally collide with enemy ships sometimes detonating a small, internally carried explosive device. Extremely powerful and hit very often but are vulnerable to point defence guns.

Point DefenceShooting down the things that the enemy is shooting at you is hard to do, but is a good way to avoid damage. Point defence modules can't target ships, but will attempt to shoot down hostile missiles and artillery shells within their range.

Experimental WeaponsExperimental weapons represent energing technologies, not yet tested on the battlefield, whilst these modules may not be appear to be attractive choices, fitting them may have its own unique advantage.

Sensor ModulesSensor Modules are used to detect things from a distance, all ships are able to detect objects that are in close proximity to them, but detection from a distance require sensor modules. Sensor modules have two attributes; Sensor Strength and Scan Speed. Sensor Strength indicates the ability of the module to detect targets, Scan Speed is the number of scans that the module can perform during a turn.

Sensor ArraySensor Strength: 50Scan Speed: 2

Mass: 1050Power: 250

Large Sensor Array Sensor Strength: 80Scan Speed: 3

Mass: 1800Power: 450

Electronic CountermeasuresBeing detected at a bad time can ruin evem the best laid plans, to avoid being detected you can throw massive quantities of electromagnetic noise at the thing trying to detect you in order to blind its sensors, the unfortunate side effect of this is that it makes the ship that is doing the blinding much more visible to enemy ships.

ECM moduleJamming Strength: 40Detection bonus: 20

Mass: 800Power: 350

Heavy ECM moduleJamming Strength: 70Detection bonus: 35

Mass: 1500Power: 500

Economic ModulesSpace isn't just about killing dudes, just mostly about killing dudes. The money that you buy spaceships with has to come from somewhere.

Colony moduleCapacity: 100,000Mass: 1500Power: 200

Mining ModuleMass: 1000Power: 180

Step 3 - Decide Section HP and calculate speed

All ships are comprised of a Core Section plus a number of additional sections, the Core Section gets its HP value from the Core Integrity value of the Power Core that you have chosen for your ship, but other sections draw their HP from a "pool" known as Section HP.

Section HP represents the combined total HP of all of the non-core sections of a ship. How this HP is distributed between sections is up to you (you may wish to have some sections with more HP than others), but the total of all of the sections must equal your Section HP.

Section HP takes up mass at a ratio of 1:1. One Section HP takes up one point of mass. Remember that your ship's USED MASS cannot ever exceed its MASS ALLOWANCE.

For example, a ship comprised of 8 sections with 300 HP each will have a Section HP of 2400 which in turn adds 2400 to the ship's USED MASS. A ship comprised of 4 200 HP sections and 4 300 HP sections would have a Section HP of 2000 which would add 2000 to the ship's USED MASS.

Once you have decided on the Section HP of your ship you can calculate its speed and agility statistics.

Speed = Total Speed Power / USED MASSTurning = Total Turning Power / USED MASSAcceleration = Total Acceleration Power / USED MASS

Step 4 - Shipmaker

Build the damn thing.

Engines and ThrustersEach engine that your ship has should be represented by a single thruster or thrusterEX module on the ship itself.

If you are using a section to visually represent your ship's engines then your thruster or thrusterEX module should be parented to that section and the section's HP should be set to that of the engine rather than being based on the ship's Section HP.

Basic thrusters at this stage should use an orange or otherwise flame-like exhaust sprite, as engines at this phase are fairly simple chemical rockets, or something. Other propulsion types will come with different appearances.

Core Placement - Because Preacher is a fucking retardThe Core must be placed in the 'center' of the ship, so that a ship's size is representative of it's actual size. That means the core may not be shifted back, forwards, or to either side of the dead center of the ship.

There are no exceptions to this rule.

_________________

Last edited by Arcalane on Mon Nov 29, 2010 4:01 am, edited 82 times in total.

Eight simulations were run, each producing similar results: The surviving side lost roughly 75% of their sections each battle. I observe two vs one is an even matching.

There was little room to fit all the weapons in design, and their effect was a consistent rain toward any target. I will not comment on battle pacing until new armor/weapon ratios are tested; what I observed was fast-paced destruction but potentially acceptable.

During the two vs one trial, I found the vulcans to be visually very impressive en masse. To test their effectiveness, I replaced the vulcans and artillery on a 78 radius variant with 9 additional autocannon (14 total).

While vulcans seem to have over double an autocannon's dps (including reload .76 vs .33), I find that unless your ship is touching noses with it's target, deviation produces less direct damage compared to two ACs (by equivalent cost). Take this as you will.

Armor fared poorly against the armed over six trials, damaging between 25-35% before destruction. The combat was slightly prolonged, now that less firepower and more armor is on the field- an average of 40 seconds passed before each armored ship was rendered ineffective.

Two trials were also performed with the armored 110 vs two 78 (all-ac), where I observed less damage to the 78s- assumed due to alternating targets.

Finally four trials were performed with the ships used yesterday, to reintroduce artillery. Two with the 110 (-6 ac, +2 art), two with two 78s(5ac, 3vc, 1art). Combat length increased to 45 seconds, and the non-armor variants suffered ~5% more damage.

Looking at the engine stats, the light really seems to be a huge step above the rest in efficiency, and it does seem to make the other systems redundant for everything but getting a perfect complete fill of your allowed mass. Viewing the stuff below, it actually shows that lighter is better in every way except a small difference in the Mass to Accel between normal and heavy. Light however, is still superior in every way to the other two.

At the moment, the missiles just seem a tad too good for their mass and damage, with twice the firing arc of other weapons, nice range, and almost surefire hit chance thanks to guidance, it really does make it much better than the two other long range choices in the artillery and its repeating variant.

Course, it could just be that the artilleries are a little underpar compared to the other choices of weaponry, with sub par damage, even when considering the tiny amount of splash damage that it has, and the fact that while its marked range is 1200, its effective range is a fair bit shorter against any moving target. The main problem added by this is the huge mass that they have relative to other weapons, meaning they have the worst MDPS of all the weapons.

Other than that really, the weapon balance isn't actually that bad, with each of the current classes having their advantages, the Autocannons with their high Damage for their mass and low energy, vulcans with their very high damage output and slight spread giving them a better chance of hitting faster moving targets and the missile with its high damage accuracy, large firing arc and range (I wouldn't mind too much if its tracking or damage was lowered just a tad however, but thats my opinion).
Yeah, originally I had a list showin the DPS and MDPS, but I can't be bothered doing it again as I got logged out and lost the message. I might edit it in later.

I have a question about radius determination. Since arbitrary core placement can affect size to make ships artificially bigger/smaller in number, will there be any guidelines to stop people from fudging their size?

I have a question about radius determination. Since arbitrary core placement can affect size to make ships artificially bigger/smaller in number, will there be any guidelines to stop people from fudging their size?

A size 100 ship using these rules can be twice as big as another size 100 ship depending on core placement, and still be the same in strength just a bigger target with a larger spread of it's overall HP.

_________________Fly me to the moon, so I can play among the stars~
Let me see what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars~

I have a question about radius determination. Since arbitrary core placement can affect size to make ships artificially bigger/smaller in number, will there be any guidelines to stop people from fudging their size?

Additionally, one must remember that placing the core anywhere but the center means that it takes less fire from one direction to pierce through to the core, as well as increasing the likelihood that a weapon with splash damage being capable of hitting the core.

The only real way to cheat the size thing is to put a tiny, light armored section that just sticks out to increase size, and doesn't really serve much other purpose. However, this would probably be easy to spot, so it'd be easy to prevent.

Also, the prototype-type weapons are looking pretty good. The drones are pretty bad in the damage department, but are effective and highly accurate, while the beam does its work quite well.

I have a question about radius determination. Since arbitrary core placement can affect size to make ships artificially bigger/smaller in number, will there be any guidelines to stop people from fudging their size?

"Don't do that" is the guideline for that issue. That kind of thing is cheating, and it's obvious cheating too. A ship's "size" should always be representative of its actual physical size.

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